February 27 - "Myth and the Making of the Spartan Dyarchy"

Join us on Friday, February 27 at 3 p.m. in Tory 2-58 for "Myth and the Making of the Spartan Dyarchy", a talk by Stephanie Dennie.

Talk Description: This talk explores how the myths of return of the Herakleidai (and other related myths) were used to legitimize Spartan dual kingship from the 8th-6th century BCE. Drawing from a chapter of my monograph-in-progress, Myth and the Making of the Spartan Dyarchy, I will examine how these myths functioned as dynamic tools of political ideology. By tracing their transformations from the archaic to classical periods, the talk reveals how myth operated as a flexible medium through which Spartans reimagined authority, ancestry, and collective identity.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Stephanie Dennie (she/her) is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. She specializes in the history of Sparta from the Archaic to the Roman period, and contemporary reception of Sparta in North American political discourse. Dennie previously taught at the University of Western Ontario and completed her doctorate there in 2024. She is currently working on 2 research projects; 1) about the impact of the representation of Sparta in Canadian Right-Wing Extremism, and 2) on the relationship between myth and the institutionalization of the Spartan dyarchy in the archaic period.